


So Slowly Does the Skein of Time Unwind

by deathwailart



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux<br/>Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,<br/>Tant l'écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!</p>
<p>I envy the lot of the lowest animals<br/>Who are able to sink into a stupid sleep,<br/>So slowly does the skein of time unwind!</p>
<p>De profundis clamavi - Charles Baudelaire (William Aggeler translation)</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Slowly Does the Skein of Time Unwind

It is not as if she is unaware of the world around her. If anything, here, alone in her room in the villa, she is painfully aware of the passage of time. When she is silent in her prayer she hears all; the clang of steel in the courtyard, Mario and his men, the sound of Monteriggioni being rebuilt around her through the work of her son. And when she can occasionally think and feel beyond the unending haze of agony and grief, she worries about her remaining son. _Mio Dio_ , she cannot stomach more loss. Her husband, her eldest, her youngest, all snatched from her and she able to do nothing but hold back her tears, pray for them and for Ezio and prevent those vile men from touching her daughter.

She has heard her daughter’s complaints at the villa. Perhaps she and Giovanni spoiled her too much but at least here she is safe and can be accounted for each day and night.

Claudia doesn’t spend as much time in Maria’s room anymore. It’s better that way; her daughter should have some chance at a life instead of tending to a broken woman clinging to ghosts and feathers. She loved all her children equally but the loss of little Petruccio is particularly hard to swallow. He was so young and hadn’t fate dealt him a cruel enough hand already in this life? He had not asked to be so sickly, confined to his bed and unable to emulate his much loved _fratelli_ , instead looking for feathers. It’s all she has f him. All she has of their life in Firenze. She has nothing of Giovanni beyond their remaining children (save for Ezio in those robes she had seen so often and associated with that sharp stab of worry at not ever seeing him alive again) and nothing at all of Federico. It cuts through her. She has only memories. Scolding Federico for his lack of seriousness whilst laughing in the same breath and telling him to go and find Ezio. Giovanni...she remembers too much. That wicked smile, his warmth, the burn on his finger, the fierce love he had for all of them.

That one last wound she stitched for him.

She is plagued by nightmares of that night over and over, waking with silent screams. But it is the good dreams that torment her when she believes she will wake in her marital bed, head on Giovanni’s chest.

Sometimes she thinks it would be easier on Ezio and Claudia if she had died in their home. True, it would have devastated them but neither of them had yet been twenty. They could have lived other lives. But now Claudia tends to the accounts and Ezio goes out in the robes of his father to take lives all the time, no normal home life to return to.

She hears noise from below, farewells and wishes of good luck and success. Her son is departing again.

She adds an extra prayer for him.


End file.
